THERE is still a lot of work to be done but with 100 days to go London Olympic organisers can reflect that their journey up to now has been largely stress-free.
The so-called ‘big build’ of the main venues has been completed with few dramas, LOCOG have commendably raised £700m in commercial revenues to pay for the staging of the Games and the torch is due to land here in just over a month’s time. Sure, there is a lot still to be done. As LOCOG chief executive Paul Deighton pointed out at yesterday’s event at a damp and chilly Kew Gardens, they still have 200 000 temporary seats to install – the equivalent of more than two Wembleys.
The last batch of one million tickets will go on sale at the start of May.
With yesterday’s BBC Radio 5 live poll suggesting there is still indifference to the Games outside London and the south east this may determine whether the rest of the country starts to get a bit more engaged or whether the sense of disaffection many people feel about the ticketing process will spread.
My guess, having watched the countdown to a number of previous Games closely, is that a lot of the cynicism will melt away as the public get caught up in the hype and the sport.
As Paul Hayward so elegantly pointed out in my old paper The Telegraph, we are a nation of sports nuts and once the Games start people will care less about the £9.3bn budget and more about the enthralling human stories which, in an age of cynical sporting commercialism, only the Olympic Games can deliver
On that score, those responsible for Team GB are growing increasingly optimistic about their chances of delivering on their target of fourth in the medal table. When you consider the £300M that has been invested in elite sport – boosted by a further £750 000 yesterday, then that is exactly as it should be.
The cyclists look in great form judging by their performances in the World Cup in Melbourne.
David Tanner, the performance director for British rowing, told me a couple of weeks back that this was the strongest team he had ever put together – some assessment given his track record in previous Games.
And sailing, the other British banker, also looks to be on course to deliver their usual gold rush.
On Monday, I spent a few hours with three-time gold medallist Ben Ainslie as he returned for his first training session of the year on the Olympic sailing course at Weymouth and Portland.
Ainslie has had a dreadful winter. First he faced suspension from the sport after he lost it and dived into the water to confront a cameraman who got in his way during the World Championships in Perth in December.
Then, more worryingly, he injured his back and had to have surgery. He has openly admitted that the last three months have been the darkest of his glittering career but having won on his return to action in the World Cup in Palma, Mallorca, a couple of weeks ago, he does now seem to be back on track.
The impressive National Sailing Academy in Weymouth and Portland is just starting to buzz with the ambition of our sailors. Over the next couple of months the crews will be fine-tuning their preparations on the waters which they will have to race on this summer, testing the tides and the winds so they know exactly what to expect.
You would think that having been here so many times before, someone like Ainslie might not need to put in the hours in quite the same way as he did before his first gold back in Sydney in 2000. But he says he is training harder than ever. He knows that the unique pressures of a home Games mean that his previous achievements could be overlooked if he doesn’t win here.
Away from the middle class sitting-down sports, the swimmers look capable of competing with the best in the world – remarkable when you consider where the sport was before London won the bid to stage the Games in 2005.
But the picture in the blue riband sport, athletics, is a bit more mixed. Performance director Charles van Commenee is confident that his team will get the eight medals he has set as a target and the performance at the World Indoor Championships in Istanbul was encouraging.
There are some concerns over some of the more high-profile members of the team.
Mo Farah has lost some of his invincible aura since his historic triumph over 5 000m in the World Championships in Daegu last August.
Paula Radcliffe was always a long shot for a medal in the marathon but her performance in the half marathon in Vienna at the weekend suggests she is even further off the pace than first feared.
And poster girl Jessica Ennis knows she faces an almighty task to deliver the gold so many people have already hung around her neck.
All of this is very domestic of course and one of the most striking features about the 100 days-to-go event at Kew was the trebling in the number of international TV crews and journalists in attendance.
LOCOG chair Sebastian Coe has spent the last few months travelling the globe drumming up interest in the Games. He says he has never experienced such a sense of anticipation around the countdown to an Olympics.
He is bound to say that, of course, but the biggest change many people will notice in the coming months is the level of international expectation and pressure. This is when the scale of the Games and the event Britain is hosting really hits home.
London has earned the admiration of the world for its preparations so far. But all that will count for nothing if LOCOG and Team GB drop the baton during the final run-in. (BBC Sport)